The donation comes with a bit of a hitch: it’s to be used to promote homeopathy.

On Monday, UC Irvine Chancellor Howard Gillman announced that the Samuelis have donated $200 million to launch what he billed as the nation’s first universitywide enterprise to embed integrative health approaches in research, teaching and patient care.

I suppose if it’s used to actually do good science on crap like homeopathy and reiki and psychic vampire repellent sprays, sure, fine, whatever. But I suspect that it’ll be used to ram woo into the medical industry *despite* the science.

There’s a time and a place for cosplay. And an airport is not the place.

She flew in to Brussels Zaventem Airport from Tunis without having proven her identity; she refused to show herself and prove her identity in Belgium, and the immigration people weren’t having it. So, back she went.

Since “race issues” are all the rage these days, it’s interesting to see how other cultures do it. Yes, yes, I know, only white people can be racist… or so say people who, based on the prejudiced race-based opinions they spout, you’d *swear* were racist. But it sure seems like something very like racism seems to exist pretty universally across all cultures and ethnicities.

Take, for example, the Japanese. They are so efficient at it they’re racist against *themselves.* If you watch this and come away pondering “say, that kinda reminds me of big city elitist white liberals and white rednecks,” then, well, I guess that’s on you.

Been away from Ye Olde Internet for much of the day… hey, I’ve got other stuff to do. When I checked email there were a few notifications of comments on this here blog; I normally give them a quick glance and reply… or don’t. As I hope seems fair and accurate, I generally let people say whatever they want, whether I agree or not, so long as they don’t go bonkers.

One of the notifications was from a commenter I didn’t recognize, commenting on the recent ANTIFA issues. The comment was one of those Tolstoy-esque wall-o-texts that usually go by almost utterly unread, because, really, who has the time. But I scanned through it and promptly decided that it needed to be countered. I opened up the relevant post, but the comment was gone. I assume the commenter deleted his own post. Shrug.

What the commenters point was, I’m not entirely clear… remember, wall-o-text. But it ended off with the sort of thing that makes me go “oy,” sigh, and shake my head. In short… all the troubles in society today are the result of DA JOOOOZ. Apparently they are deviously working at eliminating the white race and installing a multicultural dystopia via the forces of ANTIFA and similar left-wing fascist organizations.

Ummm… yeah, no.

Sigh.

As startled as some have been by the existence of a few hundred neo-Nazis out in Virginia, I’d like to say I’m as startled by the existence of a *lot* more anti-semites still spouting really, really wacky late 19th century conspiracy theories. Sadly, I can’t honestly say I’m that startled; I’ve seen this sort of nonsense for *decades.* If you believe these loons, an astonishingly small cabal of Jews control the whole world.

You’d think that if Da Jooz were that good at that sort of thing, there’d be more of them, and they wouldn’t be under perpetual assault by idiots and savages. Conversely, if they were this good at controlling the world while leaving no actual evidence whatsoever, maybe we should let them. Because they must be pretty damn good at it…

What gets me is just how all-purpose the Blame-The-Jews conspiracy is. At the same time that the Jews are blamed for killing Christ, they are also blamed for *creating* Christianity as a way to trash the native European religions. Way to cover all those bases, guys.

Also of head-scratching interest is just how much overlap there seems to be in anti-semitic conspiracy theories and Russian interests. Basically, Russian Nazis. This is, of course, not new; I’ve yammered about Russian pro-Hitlerneo-Nazis before. And whole it’s not new, it remains utterly perplexing.

Russian Nazis.RUSSIAN NAZIS. At the same time Russia was invading, occupying and annexing chunks of Ukraine because the Russian government was supposedly concerned about supposed fascists in the Ukrainian government, the Russian government was loading up with fascists. Weird.

There are lots of problems in the world, and a lot of problems in American culture and society. But the Jews? Sorry, no. Jewish theology impresses me as little as most other religious theologies, but you know what? Unlike some religions I can name, the era when the Jews were a threat to outsiders is *long* over. A few hundred years of getting smacked around by the Babylonians and the Egyptians and the Romans pretty much put an end to that nonsense, and for the last few millenia they’ve not been troublesome. Why the hell the Jews continue to get the blame for things that are clearly not their fault is confounding. It’s a bug in the human operating system, the same bug that results in people screeching about 9/11 being either a hoax or an inside job, school shootings like Newtown being carried out by “crisis actors,” aliens being responsible for everything that the Jews weren’t (and, I suppose, often enough responsible for everything that the Jews are also responsible for), Apollo being a hoax, Fukishima dumping so much radiation into the environment that California was doomed, AIDS was created in a CIA lab, that the Earth is flat, that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that the Earth is the center of the universe. We are a buggy damn species.

I suppose that’s the Jews fault too.

Sigh.

So I suppose the short form is: if you come here to blame DA JOOZ for the problems of the world, or for your own damn failings… bugger off.

The latter one is written by one David Cole, a “Holocaust revisionist.” In other words, a dumbass. But he did interview the professor in question, and raises some interesting points. The professor expands the definition of “genocide” rather broadly to include wiping out “ways of life,” so that the United States stomping the the CSA flat and exterminating their slave-holding way of life was “genocide.” Well, ok. But if we accept that as a valid definition of “genocide,” then the current wave of invasion into Europe, with some regions having their prior culture being remade in the image of the newcomers… isn’t *that* genocide?

You expand the definition of politically loaded worlds at your own peril.

I think there’s a bit of pint-missing in the article. Yes, there hasn’t been a new religion on the scale of Islam or Christianity since the rise of Islam… but major world-girdling religions have always been *relatively* few, and most of them are *really* old. Setting aside the notion that “maybe religion X is the One True Religion,” the worlds major religions have gotten *really* good at providing what people seem to want from a religion. Thus there’s just not that much room in the market for new suppliers.

Still, the article has some interesting stuff in it, including descriptions of what happened to a recently invented new religion in Indonesia that has drawn thousands of adherents, mostly from former Muslims. You’ll be shocked, SHOCKED, to discover that Indonesia has laws that make it effectively illegal for Muslims to eave their faith.

As y’all know, I’ve little enough use for Christian “End Times” prophesying. To me the Book of Revelation reads like someone with schizophrenia got hold of some magic mushrooms… which is quite possibly not that far from the mark. The various “signs and portents” do not impress me. But the problem as I see it is that they do impress a whole lot of other folk.One that impresses a whole lot of folk is the idea of the “mark of the beast:”

The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

So, what we got here is a mark on the right hand or forehead that is required for buying or selling. With End-Timers, there’s a weird mix of literalism and metaphor, so that the “mark of the beast” could be any damn thing, from a simple mark like a tattooed symbol to an idea (like the holder of the mark simply believes something or other) to, now, thanks to modern technology, some sort of implanted microchip.

I won’t start worrying about the end of days until we get a winter that lasts three years. But other folk worry about (or, indeed, look forward to) Armageddon. And often enough, history has shown that when people merely *believe* some sort of thing is going to happen, they’ll *make* it happen, for good or ill. So, imagine how thrilling this news item will be:

In short, the company is providing, optionally and for free, the implantation of RFID chips similar to what you can get for your dog or cat. The purpose of this is that the company will have RFID chip readers on doors and vending machines, so all an employee needs to do is wave their chipped hand over the sensor and the door will open or their account will be charged.

Having my employer surgically implant something within me to “help” me do my job is more than a little creepifyin’, but it’s the march of progress, I suppose. But you *know* some people are going to be directly freaked the hell out about this and start going off about The Beast. The kind of funny thing: I expect RFID chipping of humans to be a fad. Before too long, doors and vending machines and billboards and cops will have biometric readers that don’t need some clunky old-fashioned chip to be implanted… they’ll recognize your fingerprints, or your iris patterns or your voice or, a few years further down the line, your DNA. Then the “mark of the Beast” will be something you’re born with. And nothing bad could possibly come of that.

“The Ark Encounter” always promised to be pure ridiculouslness, and it seems that things are starting to come to a head. Basically, it’s a sh!tshow of epic and hopefully legally actionable proportions.

The city of Williamstown, Kentucky, decided to charge a 50 cent “safety tax” to each ticket sold. The purpose of this tax is to pay for government services – police, ambulance, fire and so on – that a tourist “attraction” like this needs to have available to it. Such fees are common for theme parks and the like. Since Ark Encounter was sold to the city as a “For Profit” endeavor, it can (and should) be taxed. But Ken Hamm worked up a way around that… the Ark Encounter for-profit people sold the land to *themselves* for $10. What was the point? Well, the for-profit Answers In Genesis that owned the land and which in turn is owned by Hamm sold the land to Crosswater Canyon, a religious non-profit organization… that Hamm also owns. And now that it’s a religious non-profit, it can’t be taxed.

Perfectly legal, but ultra-scumbaggery. Unsurprisingly, it has ticked off the city and state government who were sold this bill of goods as being a for-profit enterprise which would bring in bajillions of out of state tourists (it hasn’t) and spur the local economy (it hasn’t). And so…

The safety tax was expected to cost the Ark $700 grand a year. They tried to sleaze out of it, and lost themselves $18 million as a result.

Hmm.

So, who wants to prophesy how this is all going to end up? I foresee two possibilities of roughly equal likelihood;

1) The Ark winds up getting sold off and turned into a hotel, casino, something like that.

2) As things start to collapse, the Ark burns to the ground. Hamm & company blame militant atheists for it, but a whole lot of folks figure it to be an inside job.The insurance companies are *really* interested in looking into how the fire started…

Another rare piece of early Dyna Soar color art. This one shows the Dyna Soar heading to space atop the centaur upper stage of an Atlas booster. And if you think you are seeing corrugations on the back of the spaceplane, you are correct. At this stage in the design process the Dyna Soar *did* […]

So the media is currently ulcerating over Trump suggesting that he’d like to see NFL owners fire players who decide to disrespect the US flag & anthem before games. Here’s the thing: 1: It’s the players right to disrespect the flag, the anthem, the US. 2: It’s any citizens right to say that he’d like […]

Yes, I’ve posted these before. But I feel it’s important for everyone to maintain a proper level of understanding of the encabulator, the turbo-encabulator and the retro-encabulator. And of course once you have an encabulator, you’ll need to diagnose it from time to time: There have of course been advances in the field […]

Argh. Facebook is not my favorite thing. But, apparently, it’s where all the cool kids hang out, so the Aerospace Projects Review Facebook page that I cobbled together years ago, I’ve started posting things in again. One of the weird things about Facebook is that you (apparently) can’t see a page unless you are signed […]

Oh, boy! Mayhem! A Group Of 62 Catholics Has Accused The Pope Of Spreading Heresy Not being Catholic, I have no dog in this fight. Still, it’s always entertaining when religious leaders tell other religious leaders they’re wrong. Wacky hijinks often ensue.

So, Star Trek Discovery plopped onto the airwaves tonight. My review: It was certainly pretty, but all those visuals were spoiled by a whole lot of “WTF am I looking at?” Especially with the “Klingons” who bore almost no relationship to any prior iteration of the Klingons, in biology, aesthetics or culture. Heck, they even […]

… in a drone: This is pretty much exactly the sort of footage that would have been impossible to get prior to the current generation of drones. So just imagine what people will be able to film once the batteries for drones are actually *good,* with the power and energy density of chemical fuels like […]

OK, let’s say your town is plagued by a transdimensional monster that takes the form of a killer psychotic clown. Who would be the best person to try to destroy this menace? That’s right, the goddamn Batman: And because why not: Bill Nye just walked into our elevator while I was snap chatting.. pic.twitter.com/LwCOITAEft […]

A deli worker was attacked, someone came across the counter and slashed at him with a knife. He fought back with a knife of his own, and the other guy got the worse of it. So, what happened? Did the city of New York throw the deli worker a ticker tape parade? Give him the […]